an aussie in austria

I have a confession. Babies freak me out. They’re small, and all-knowing and annoying in the way they can’t take care of themselves.

I’m also not completely comfortable with pregnant women. I see them out and about, trundling around with a huge bump in front of them… carrying a living creature! Growing one! They do it like they have no care in the world. Like it’s a completely normal thing. Which, let’s be honest, it is.

So the news that I’m pregnant might come as a bit of a surprise. I’m currently one of those freaky women walking around with a bump, with a freaky living creature inside me, that will turn into an actual squealing, unable to look after itself, baby.

And this was no accident. I actively made this happen.

I always figured the older I got the more I’d want a kid. When in fact the opposite happened. The older I got the clearer I could envisage a life without children. And it got me thinking… why on earth do people go to the trouble?

When we started considering the whole ‘let’s have a baby thing’, classic Debbie wrote a pros and cons list. And guess what? There are no pros to having a baby. And before you object, let me explain. The cons are so easy to come up with. A baby takes away your time, it can derail your career, in the early days it’s little more than a squealing poo machine that costs money. The list goes on. Those things are super easy to define. Unlike the pros (or so they tell me). Like the unconditional love. Which is apparently something you don’t experience until you’re in it.

So without that maternal instinct kicking my biological clock in front of my face, I really could have gone either way.

But that’s the thing. If you’re on the fence, it’s a big decision to have a kid, but it’s also a big decision not to. And I’ve heard from both sides – some say if you’re on the fence definitely do it, you won’t regret it. Others are more cautious. But either way, you can’t go back. In the same way I can’t live in Austria and Australia at the same time, I can’t lead a DINK way of life, and simultaneous experience the (allegedly) amazing joy of becoming a parent.

So this is what we’re doing. And at 20-something weeks it gets more and more obvious every day, and harder to deny. And I have a feeling it’s going to be a rather fast march toward this new adventure, because there ain’t no going back now! So… all I can do is gulp and say… bring it on!